KANSAS CITY, Mo. — “Deebo brought us into the stadium, and he took us out of the stadium.”
That’s what Lawrence Timmons was telling me minutes after the Steelers had strode off the soggy Arrowhead turf late Sunday night. I had no idea what it meant, just having stuck it to the Chiefs, 18-16, to soar into the AFC Championship Game next week at New England.
And L.T. was referring, of course, to James Harrison, who was silently stripping off his galactic stormtrooper gear at the adjacent stall. So you can be sure it was a good thing being emphasized.
I just had no idea what it meant.
So I took it around the room.
“Oh, that’s right,” Bud Dupree came back. “Into the stadium and out of the stadium.”
Huh?
“In and out, just like that,” Sean Davis would offer, his accompanied by a broad smile. “Where Deebo goes, we follow, you know I’m sayin’?”
Getting there, I suppose. But hey, let’s just say this matter, unlike all those matters that Antonio Brown mindlessly laid bare later in the evening with his already infamous Facebook Live video, should probably stay with the fellas.
What counts from the conundrum is this: When these remarkable, resilient Steelers most needed a big play, they yet again got it from their 38-year-old defensive leader:
That up there is Harrison being held, and flagrantly so, by Kansas City left tackle Eric Fisher. But that, in and of itself, is hardly special. Happens maybe a half-dozen times a game, including at pivotal points such as this one, with the Chiefs going for a two-point conversion that would have tied the score with 2:43 remaining.
No, for the fullest context about what’s special here, know that there’s probably an equal chance of any of the following three occurring on any given Sunday:
• The kicker converts six field goals on a rainy, frigid, windswept night.
• A running back rips off 170 yards on a rainy, frigid, windswept night in a Divisional Playoff matchup against an opponent with a mega-money defensive front.
• The ref flags someone for holding Harrison.
Well, what do you know?
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Chris Boswell and Le’Veon Bell put on their respective shows, and Harrison …
“That’s a holding call I get once every blue moon,” the man groused to a question on the topic. “I don’t know how that’s not called more often. I’ve got an arm wrapped around my neck, and you still don’t see anything called.”
He’s right, as we’ve seen for a decade and change now. Whether it’s his surly reputation or just that he pressures so often that he could draw a flag every other play, it’s taken a ton to get referees to reach for their pockets when it comes to Harrison.
So huzzah to Carl Cheffers, the referee who made a call without worrying about the impact. No rules in any sport stipulate a referee or umpire doing his job differently because of the score or stage of the game. All that’s required is that they rule correctly on the sequence at hand.
Now someone tell that to all the Chiefs who whined about precisely that.
“I’ve seen a lot worse not get called, that’s for sure,” Alex Smith said. “That’s tough in an environment where you want the refs to let you play?
Say what?
And Harrison isn’t allowed to play?
This just-let-’em-play thinking always blows my mind, and that includes when it comes from Pittsburgh teams. It’s as if breaking the rules somehow becomes permissible as the stakes are raised.
Travis Kelce, the talented tight end, went way further.
“That wasn’t a hold on my guy Eric Fisher,” Kelce said. “I hope 72 doesn’t go the entire offseason thinking it was his fault. That was horse (expletive), flat-out.”
He wasn’t close to done, claiming the ref “felt bad for James Harrison falling on the ground” and adding, “It’s ignorance. The ref, No. 51, shouldn’t be able to wear a zebra jersey ever again. He shouldn’t even be able to work at (expletive) Foot Locker.”
Fisher, to his credit, did absorb the blame, saying, “Game on the line, and for me to let the team down, it’s going to be a hard one to let go.”
That’s a victory for lovers of common sense everywhere, considering Harrison wound up with — hang on, I think they’re still counting — a team-high six tackles, half of those for losses, two quarterback hits and this sack that killed a third-quarter Kansas City drive:
That’s Kelce’s hero getting scorched there, too. As Fisher was all night. Never mind his being the first overall pick in the 2013 NFL Draft, or securing $70 million in contract commitments from the Chiefs, or that Harrison gives up 8 inches and a dozen years in the matchup.
I asked Harrison about the advantage he has in facing a younger player.
Did you see how nicely he responded, by the way?
I’ve told this tale a time or two, but many years ago and new to the beat, I asked Harrison some really lame, vague question in Latrobe about what would be the key for the Steelers to succeed that year. And after he shared with me, in particularly colorful terms, what he thought of my question — hey, he was right — he gave an answer I’ll never forget.
“It’s football. It never changes: Beat the man in front of you.”
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The move Harrison used to abuse Fisher on the holding call is called a “rip” by his teammates. And it’s exactly as cool as it sounds.
“That’s the one Deebo’s always got in the back pocket,” Cam Heyward was explaining. He’s seen it up close more than anyone. “He throws one arm across, gets underneath, uses all that strength for leverage, and he’s past the guy. That’s what happened on the sack. That’s what happened on the holding. It’s man-on-man, and he wins.”
That’s how Harrison has always played the game. The only difference now is that, instead of being the loner who left all the leadership up to Brett Keisel and Ryan Clark and Casey Hampton and even soft-spoken Troy Polamalu, Harrison made a decision — conscious or otherwise — after the Steelers were buried in a four-game losing streak and giving up points all over creation, that he’d share with the group.
He began preaching being “selfish,” of all things. It meant that the defense was only going to work if each individual focused on what he had to do, not on everyone around them. It’s the only way he’s played the game, and heaven knows, it’s the only way he’s lived his life.
It worked. Man, did it work. The Steelers have won every game since then, and on top of that, they’ve been led by the defense.
In turn, the defense has been led by Harrison’s “selfish” stance, which dovetails beautifully with that line he spat my way long ago: Beat the man in front of you.
I ran that past some of those players after this game:
Speaking up is one thing. Showing up is another.
Earlier in the week, Harrison told Ryan Shazier he thought he could “get to Fisher,” as he had in crushing him three years ago.
“I think he did,” Shazier deadpanned.
That’s real performance:
That resonates. That has impact on all fronts.
The offense was a red-zone mess in this game, an unfortunate mix of excessive cleverness and lousy execution. But even though most of the salary cap and most of the flash is on that side of the ball, they, too, have fed off Harrison and the defense.
Bell, yet again, was brilliant. He beat his man, figuratively, all game long, even when there were eight of those men in the box, as staff photographer Matt Sunday captured again and again:
Le’Veon Bell. — MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
The offensive line, now citing Harrison’s “selfish” stance for themselves, beat the Chiefs’ front seven so thoroughly that, as Bell stressed, “Those guys did a great job of opening holes, and it really allowed me to pick my spots and not allowing penetration. I tell those guys to allow me to mess with the linebackers. Let me get to the line of scrimmage, and the rest will be history.”
That’s Bell’s battle. That’s the man, or men, he’s trying to beat.
Same goes for the big boys.
“We work together, but we’ve all got to win our own battles,” Marcus Gilbert said. “I have to do my job. That comes first.”
The special teams has done much of the same. After Tomlin’s dubious call to open with the squib kick — living in his fears, a cynic might say — he followed through with real kickoffs to the Chiefs’ dynamic Tyreek Hill, and the Steelers’ kick coverage guys totally nullified him.
The order they got from Tomlin and Danny Smith, the special teams coach, was simple: If you’re going to try to tackle him, do it like you mean it.
“Go right at him,” Williams said. “Don’t hesitate.”
Tackle the man in front of you, kind of like this:
That’s Williams, with support from Jarvis Jones, making good on the public pledge Williams made to me earlier in the week that, “We want to kick the ball to him, and we’ll do the rest.”
Still and all, this was built on the defense. And Harrison’s prints were all over the place.
Artie Burns, the stirringly poised rookie cover corner, did that cover corner thing in style. His man below was Hill, and Burns beat his man:
“One on one,” Burns said. “I’ll take that all day.”
Sean Davis, another rookie in the secondary, bounced back from an earlier penalty for driving his helmet into a defenseless receiver. It helped that Tomlin, Carnell Lake and Joey Porter were in his face immediately after that play shouting, “Play your game!” per what Davis told me. But full marks go to one man alone for this diving pass defensed on the two-point try after Harrison’s big play backed up the Chiefs by 10 yards:
Jeremy Maclin was Timmons’ responsibility there, but part of every safety’s job is to help a linebacker in deep coverage. So Davis beat his man.
“I just read the quarterback,” Davis said. “I saw him run a double-move, I figured he was the target, and I made the play.”
His feeling after that ball caromed away?
“I just like playing ball, and I just play till the whistle blows.”
Beating someone one-on-one isn’t always physical in professional sports. Ross Cockrell, the resident genius in the secondary, had a sense that he was getting to the usually staid Kelce. So this happened in the third quarter with Kansas City’s marching down the field:
Cockrell rides Kelce an extra stride or two in coverage, then willfully stops to look at him.
And that’s all that occurred, by the way, from what Cockrell told me: “I never said a word to the guy. Not one word. I just looked at him. And he went all playground on me.”
The Chiefs settled for a field goal and, eventually, lost by two.
Cockrell beat his man.
It’s almost as if all of this is happening in harmony.
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I asked Harrison if, based on his experience with competing for championships, he has any feel for whether this team is coming together in a way he likes.
Only this time, I knew I’d thrown him a stupid bleeping question.
“We’ll see,” he answered as anyone would have known he would. “Time will tell.”
That’s how he thinks. He’s driven in a way most of us can’t even comprehend. Obsessed, really. And his obvious, only goal, maybe the last of his increasingly great career, is to win again. Not this week. Certainly not last week. Maybe not even next week against the Patriots.
It’s to win it all. One more time.
So yeah, it’s personal. It’s “selfish.” And not just for him.
“Eight years, man,” Mike Mitchell was musing as he zipped up his last bag. “It took a long time. It was hard. It was really hard.”
It’s about to get harder. The Patriots are the Patriots. They’re Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, all that mystique, and all that far more relevant reality.
But it says here that these Steelers, while they might not outwit the game’s ultimate brain or outmaneuver its premier chess piece, they can win their one-on-one battles. They know that now. They know that about Bell, they’ve known it forever about Ben and AB, they know it about their offensive line, they know it about their energetic, synergistic defense … and they sure know it about old No. 92.
In a rare moment of softiness, Harrison unveiled a beauty near the end of our time.
“I give all the credit to God,” he said. “I’m just blessed to be able to still play this game at 38 years old.”
He paused, slightly shook his head, and added, “I’m just sitting in the back, riding the bus and letting Him drive.”
Right in and right out of the stadium.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Pictures from the Steelers’ win over the Chiefs. — MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
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